[darksaga]

Agreed. I know a lot of people who start to flirt with the notion of using Bitcoin, only to have their dreams smashed when they learn how frequently these companies and their accounts are hacked.

It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.

[corysama]

To my knowledge, the bitcoin system itself has never been compromised. Unfortunately, there are a lot of services built /around/ the bitcoin system that have been set up by teenagers... If you were to deposit $100K of platinum in a reserve set up by teenagers, I wouldn't have much sympathy when you lose it. Doesn't mean platinum is useless, however.

[j_s]

> It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.

Would you mind clarifying what you're meaning by 'it' and 'secure'? To me, the (in-)security of a particular bitcoin site is orthogonal to the security of Bitcoin as a protocol/currency, though the security of bitcoin sites does have a huge impact on mainstream use.

[darksaga]

Sorry, should have been more clear. By "it" I meant the sites where bitcoins are being traded. And yes, seeing these sites getting hacked frequently makes mainstream acceptance a lot harder. Which in turn makes changing the paradigm take a lot longer.